Maritime Monday; The Witch of November

Atlas containing ye Best Maps of the several parts of the World collected by Phil: Lea who selleth all sorts of Mathematicall Books and Instruments. Creator/Publisher: Phillip Lea, ~1690 Atlas Title Pageson bibliodyssey

Big Fitz: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that made headlines after sinking in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29.

For seventeen years the Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo and other ports. As a “workhorse” she set seasonal haul records six different times, often beating her own previous record. Her size, record-breaking performance, and “DJ captain” endeared the Fitzgerald to boat watchers. Captain Peter Pulcer was known for piping music day or night over the ship’s intercom system while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers, and entertaining spectators at the Soo Locks with a running commentary about the Fitzgerald.

Investigations into the sinking led to changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of vessels. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known disasters in the history of Great Lakes shipping. Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot made it the subject of his 1976 hit song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“.

It was inspired by the Newsweek article on the event, “The Cruelest Month”, which appeared in the issue of November 24, 1975. Lightfoot’s personal passion for recreational sailing on the Great Lakes lends an air of authenticity, and he considers it to be his finest work.

Rebecca Coriam: lost at sea

When Rebecca Coriam vanished from the Disney Wonder in March, hers became one of the 171 mysterious cruise ship disappearances in the past decade. So what happened? Jon Ronson booked himself a cabin to find out…

There’s no talk of it, but many people on board know something terrible occurred on this route – to Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas – earlier this year. At 5.45am on Tuesday 22 March, a CCTV camera captured a young woman on the phone in the crew quarters. Her name was Rebecca Coriam. She was 24, from Chester, and had recently graduated Exeter University. She’d been working in Youth Activities on board for nine months, and apparently loved it.

“You see this young boy walk up to her to ask her if she’s all right,” her father Mike told me a few weeks ago, sitting in the family’s back garden in Chester. “She said, ‘Yeah, fine.’ Then she put the phone down. She turned around. She had her hands in her back pockets, which she always did. Then she put her hands to her head like this, pushing her hair back…” Mike did the movement. It looked normal. “And then she walked off.”

Badass Bridge of the Day:The Moses Bridge, as its name suggests, is pedestrian bridge that creates the illusion of walking through water — in this case, the West-Brabant waterline near Fort de Roovere in the Netherlands.

Designed by RO & AD Architects, the bridge was built using Accoya wood, a type of modified wood that offers the enhanced durability necessary to sustain a sunken bridge.

…Singly and by twos and threes they drifted in, as if coming to be present at some ghastly muster, shrouded in life jackets bearing the names of ships gone missing. The Wexford, Argus, McGean, Hydrus, Scott, Regina, Carruthers and Price had all sent representatives to shore to announce to everyone that they foundered, that their crews were all dead. Stiff, bloated and battered, their heads capped in ice, they floated in, rolled and pitched by the combers crashing on the beach. They came draped over life preservers, they came wrapped in each others arms, they came frozen together in clusters. All week long they came, to be collected by area farmers who sometimes had to dig half-buried bodies out of the sand that was trying to cover them… +

American film legend John Huston directedLet There Be Lightfor the U.S. Army Signal Corpsin 1946, documenting the treatment of psychologically traumatized soldiers at an army hospital after the war. The beautiful black and white cinematography might look like a Hollywood production, but the film states that “no scenes were staged. The cameras merely recorded what took place …” It’s a moving testament to the cost of war, which might be why the U.S. Army suppressed screenings of the film for over 30 years. The documentary finally resurfaced at the Cannes Film Festival in 1981, to critical acclaim.

This excerpt from the beginning of the film includes the narrator’s introduction and interviews with soldiers about their symptoms and experiences in combat. The full documentary is an hour long and can be watched at the Internet Archive.

1475 – Martin Merz was a gun-master in the service of Frederick I, the victorious, Elector Palatinate. 1469 he was the supreme canon master of Frederick’s army. He remained in the service of the Frederick’s successor Philip the Upright, Elector Palatine of the Rhine. He created his Feuerwerksbuch around 1460-1480 SEE ALL »

Monkey Fist

Monkey Fist is a smack-talking, potty mouthed, Yankee hating, Red Sox fan in Baltimore, Maryland. In addition to compiling Maritime Monday, she blogs about nautical art, history, and marine science on Adventures of the Blackgang.Submit story ideas, news links, photographs, or items of interest to her at [email protected]. She can also out-belch any man.